Social & Cultural

In 1884, William Harrington Atack was refereeing a game of rugby in Canterbury, New Zealand, using the accepted mode of the time, namely, yelling at the players when they did something wrong. This approach was far from ideal, straining the voice and exhausting the ref. Putting his hand in his pocket he discovered he'd left his dog whistle there, which sparked an idea. The next game he refereed, he sought the players' permission to use one, and the world's first sports game was played 'to the whistle'.

The move Whineray came up with involves peeling men off from the back of the lineout, who then drive up midfield, creating a blindside.

The second five becomes the first five for a switch of play, and the fullback comes up on the newly created blindside. This move effectively commits all the opposition loose forwards and leaves it clear to move the ball around.

In New Zealand the suffragist movement was, for better or worse, entangled with the issue of temperance. Many feared the establishment of voting rights for women was a vote for prohibition, a view that was not helped by the suffragettes themselves, who organised themselves under the banner of the 'Women's Christian Temperance Union' (WCTU). The main concern of the WCTU was that excessive use of alcohol was undermining the family unit, and further, that the woman's work for the economic well being of the family was being frittered away by dad drinking all his pay. Of course, the idea of giving women the vote wasn't limited to this one issue.

The WCTU campaigned for equal divorce laws, raising the age of consent (for sexual intercourse) from the prevailing 12 years and pre-school education. They were also vocal in their opposition to the wearing of corsets, which they saw as symbolising the restriction of women.

Katherine Malcolm (b. 1847, d. 1934), more familiar to us today by her foreshortened married name, Kate Sheppard, was one of the leaders of the WCTU, and therefore, of the suffragette movement. Born in England, but moving here as a young woman, she was regarded as a highly intelligent and well-educated woman. She also had a supportive husband, who gave her the encouragement, opportunity and financial means to travel the country expounding her views on women’s rights.

Godward had been born in England, but at the age of 12 he ran away to sea, reaching East Asia before someone noticed how young he was and sent him back. He was apprenticed as a mechanic for a few years but wanted again to get to sea, this time as a legitimate steward for P&O lines. He landed in Dunedin in 1886 and decided to call the South Island home from then on. He moved to Invercargill and set up there with a new wife (Marguerita Florence Celena Treweek) and it was a fruitful marriage - the couple went on to have 10 children.

Clearly not one to sit still though, Godward starting inventing. By 1900 he had devised a new type of eggbeater, a new post-hole borer, a hair-curler, a draft protector and many other interesting products. Real success came in 1901 when he invented a new type of hairpin, one with a spiral in it. Godward's invention got him out of Invercargill and became a great hit. He formed a company ('Godward's Spiral Pin & New Inventions Company' - surely he should win some sort of award for the most literally named company) and, taking out an international patent on it, he travelled to the United States for a year where he sold the patent for the impressive sum of twenty thousand pounds - almost a million dollars in today's currency.

He returned to Invercargill, built a huge house (Rockhaven, which is still standing) and plotted how to get out of the town again, this time for longer.

In the early 1920s George Edlin (b. ?, d. ?) and Hector Halhead ('Steam') Stewart (b. 1888, d. ?) developed a new kind of engine.

It was a horizontally opposed two-stroke engine. Two stroke engines are inherently efficient as compared to four-stroke engines, simply because it only takes two piston strokes to deliver the power - so there's less friction, less movement for the same power stroke. However, a two-stroke engine has trouble efficiently flushing the exhaust from the chamber in time for the next intake (that's what the other two strokes in the four stroke are for). This means that, especially at low revs, the two-stroke will always run rough. The Edlin-Stewart engine was more accurate and efficient at getting rid of the exhaust and taking in the new mixture. Two pistons shared a common cylinder, and a sleeve inside the cylinder moved in opposition to the pistons.

Holes in the moving sleeve formed the valves and both the sleeve and pistons were connected to cranks. Tests at Auckland University throughout the twenties confirmed the engine's power-to-weight advantages and during tests it was accidentally discovered that the engine (made to run on petrol) was also a very good diesel engine.

This first record of Marching Girls is in the official history of the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York in 1901. During the Dunedin celebrations, about 500 girls marched past as a celebration of 'girls' drill'.

By the late '20s, Marching was established in Otago as a sport. Teams of nine girls were organised and drilled - originally mainly by military men. The marching was based on the Army Manual of Elementary Drill, but instead of men calling out orders, the girls took their cues from music. By 1933 business house teams from factories, hospitals and the armed forces were competing in championships and in 1945 a group of businessmen in Wanganui met to form a national body to organise competitions between clubs. Because it was cheap, needed no special equipment or playing fields, the sport developed rapidly. All over the country young women drilled and drilled, were outfitted into uniforms and competed against rival teams. Teams are judged in competition by deducting points for the most slight and subtle errors: too high an arm swing here, slight misalignment of a head there.

Marching associations were grateful to pipe and brass bands for giving them music to compete to, and the bands were grateful to the marchers for giving them a reason to play marches that nobody else really wanted to hear.

Hone Heke and Kawiti won (or at least tied) the Northland War in the mid-1840s by building, successfully defending, then annoyingly abandoning impressive p_ at Ohaewai, Puketutu and Ruapekapeka. Under musket, cannon and even rocket fire they suffered only 60 losses to the imperial forces' 300. They had successfully adapted traditional p_ fortifications to withstand the attacks of large numbers of soldiers with canons and muskets.

At Ruapekapeka, Kawiti and his men took shelter in dark underground bunkers while the shells rained down - giving the pā its name, meaning 'bat's nest'. It was certainly a form of warfare that was new to the imperials and they took careful notice of these successful defences. Major Mould (his name, not a severe fungal difficulty) of the Royal Engineers surveyed the p_ and took a scale model back to England where some say it was tabled in the House of Commons. At the same time as the Maori were making this response to imperial firepower, warfare was changing worldwide.

The deadly accuracy of weapons and the speed of reloading had advanced quicker than the speeds troops could move, basically making soldiers in the open sitting ducks. Armies had used earthworks since armies were invented, but these methods became an increasing necessity and can be seen in notable examples in the 1700s (such as the American Revolution) and early 1800s.

Carpenters, or 'chippies', have always been a stroppy lot. They've been trouble since that incident in the Middle East in about 30AD where a carpenter went up against the Roman Empire and started a pretty big religious movement. Samuel Duncan Parnell (b. 1810, d. 1890) was no different. Parnell was born and trained as a carpenter in England, but working in London at the time meant 12 to 14 hour days, low wages and poor working conditions. Newly wedded, Parnell decided to emigrate to NZ in 1839. For the price of just £126 he could get passage to the colony, 100 acres of country land and an acre in the middle of what is now downtown Wellington - Port Nicolson at the time.

Parnell landed on 8th February 1840 and soon after was approached by one of his fellow passengers, shipping agent George Hunter, who asked him to build a new store for him. Parnell agreed, with one condition - he'd only work 8 hours per day. 'There are,' he famously argued, 'twenty-four hours per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves. I am ready to start tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, but it must be on these terms or none at all.'

Parnell's stance led the way to improved workers' rights around New Zealand and the world.

Firstly let's acknowledge that we are the only country in the world to call the rubberised sandal-like footwear so common on NZ beaches over summer, 'Jandals'. Other less refined souls call them flip-flops, or in Australia, thongs - presumably because they look like G-String pants for your feet. And there is a good reason for this - the word Jandal is actually a trademark, and for years was owned by Skellerup, a NZ company with a Danish name, before the manufacturing was moved to Malaysia and the brand was sold to Sandford Industries.

They've had to defend the trademark and the NZ High Court is considering whether 'Jandal' can actually be a trademark any more. As you can see, things are already looking shaky here. There is another reason that any claim that NZ 'invented' the footwear is tenuous - the Japanese have been wearing sandals with basically the same design for hundreds of years (the traditional woven-soled z_ri).

One of the 'inventors' of the NZ sandal even acknowledged that it was the sight of US businessman wearing rubber versions of the Japanese sandal that made them want to manufacture something similar in NZ.